Join Melanie, Joel and Hemant as they discuss their particular challenges and success factors. Hear how their shop differs from a typical IT support organization and what they are looking for when they hire IT professionals at Point2, and other HR challenges.

Once we arrived at PCS we had a chance to mingle with the thirty or so guests that were in attendance. It didn’t take long to realize we would be speaking to quite an eclectic bunch ranging from students to development managers to HR recruiters. After lunch was served it was time to get down to business.

Joel started it off with introductions and then handed it over to Melanie who gave a brief summary of Point2, discussing the evolution of the company over the last fourteen years. She gave an overview of the two major product lines in regards to heavy equipment and real estate, and the steady pace at which the company continues to grow.

I was next on the agenda and spoke about the unique development shop we have put together in Saskatoon. I briefly discussed how we used to develop software and why it had to change if we wanted to continue to be a progressive company. I got into the meat of my talk when I illustrated our move to Agile development practices including Scrum and XP, how we were starting to look at software development as a craft, our open work environment, and the culture of learning we have created by embracing professional development.

Joel followed up with a detailed look into the IT department. He spoke about the challenges we face as our business and data needs grow, and the complexities that we have to overcome by hosting our systems on-site. His explanation of our move to virtualization was eloquent and illustrated the level of expertise in our systems department.

The idea was to lay down the the unique technology environment that has emerged at Point2 before getting into the challenges it creates regarding hiring. This opened up about a forty-five minute question period around our recruitment process, our technology stack, and the Agile development practices that we have adopted.

All-in-all the presentation was well received and it was great to have a chance to highlight all of the great things that are happening at Point2. On behalf of Joel, Melanie and myself I would like to thank CIPS for inviting us to present at their luncheon. It was an honour to be involved in important discussions regarding the challenges that Saskatchewan based technology companies are facing.

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Hey.. Does CIPS have a program to match you with a sponsor or whatever you need to get the ISP designation? I’d like to get it, but don’t really know anyone who has it. Will be living in Saskatoon in the near future as well.

Hi Jason. I’m not actually a CIPS member at the moment so I can’t really provide you with a reliable answer. I would suggest contacting the Saskatchewan association at Saskatchewan@cips.ca with any of your questions. I’m sure they would be happy to help you out.